Do Christians hate us

[captainbryce]

Nice try you say,like most here you assume things,you assume I'm doing what exactly.

I have seen numerous websites with the quotes i posted,so with my limited knowledge i saught answers here regarding these verses.

People being defensive and even worse assuming have not given a single answer except for a few posters.

I came with a question not a claim.

The answer to your question is NO, Christians do not hate non-Christians. Your copy and paste job does not relate to your question. As others have already pointed out, you have copied and pasted a bunch of quotes, that are faulty interpretations of passages taken out of context. Now that you know this to be the case (or do you, I can't really tell), what further answer are you looking for? Did you want to discuss one of the passages in question?

 

[payak]

The answer to your question is NO, Christians do not hate non-Christians. Your copy and paste job does not relate to your question. As others have already pointed out, you have copied and pasted a bunch of quotes, that are faulty interpretations of passages taken out of context. Now that you know this to be the case (or do you, I can't really tell), what further answer are you looking for? Did you want to discuss one of the passages in question?

well that's just not TRUE at all,many of the verses are straight forward,the part about witches and homosexuals is there,in black and white.

lets look at them one at a time, all of them,christians here may regret asking for that however I don't believe any christian will do it,lets look at each verse.

 

[payak]

I don't believe christians are a product of the ot however,

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

well that's just not TRUE at all,many of the verses are straight forward,the part about witches and homosexuals is there,in black and white.

The one about witches is not at all straightforward, as the word "witch" in English means things today that it couldn't mean in Hebrew, Latin, or Greek. "Evil sorceress" is probably a better translation.

 

[Pegg]

I believe most Christians to be good moral people,good God fearing Christians that is.
Reading your post however,what draws you to the religion,is it the new testament,and are you a believer that you can follow your own Christian path,just you and God without the Church.

most of your quotes are from the Hebrew scriptures, not the christian scriptures.

Those commands given by Moses applied to the Isrealites. Christianity does not follow the mosaic laws, they follow the laws of the Christ.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

It's the same God though, the God that gave the laws to Moses is meant to be the same God as that of Christ, so Christians should be able to explain what the mosaic law means.

 

[Windwalker]

It's the same God though, the God that gave the laws to Moses is meant to be the same God as that of Christ, so Christians should be able to explain what the mosaic law means.

All religions speak of the same God. All religions speak different perceptions of that same God. The perceptions are not the truth of God, but a reflection of God through their eyes.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

It's the same God though, the God that gave the laws to Moses is meant to be the same God as that of Christ, so Christians should be able to explain what the mosaic law means.

This is something I'm a bit confused on, as well. It's supposedly the same god, who "does not change", yet we see a drastic disconnect between the OT and the NT. The OT says that the law would stand forever, yet the NT nullifies it (or, Paul nullifies it, Jesus upheld and taught it). Either way, I really don't see the necessity of continuing to keep the OT in the Christian scriptures. They're too different, and seem to be based on completely different philosophies, not to mention they seem to present two different gods.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

All religions speak of the same God. All religions speak different perceptions of that same God. The perceptions are not the truth of God, but a reflection of God through their eyes.

This makes sense, if we approach the Bible, not as the literal word of god, but as how man viewed god.

 

[Windwalker]

This makes sense, if we approach the Bible, not as the literal word of god, but as how man viewed god.

Thank you, yes. But we are as they were, and what was in them is in us. So we relate to, to degrees speaks to what is in us also, or we find we are too removed to relate. Culture shifts, and how people perceive God unfolds into newer light. When you see the shift in the people's of the OT, to the people's of the NT, there is radical shifts away from tribalism into a cosmopolitan world, one where many views of God come together in society. Naturally, you see a shift away from the ethnocentric deity to the universal deity, reflective of this shift in their experience of the world in human interactions. All of these things play together.

The challenge for most I believe is centered around a certain inherited worldview that the world is static. Therefore, God is this object out there that doesn't change, like a law of nature or something. So they try to mash the evolving views of God into this unchanging law. This idea here, must somehow fit like a puzzle piece with this idea back here, and so on. That whole approach is trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

I could go on at length, but I'll save it for later if you're interested.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

All religions speak of the same God. All religions speak different perceptions of that same God. The perceptions are not the truth of God, but a reflection of God through their eyes.

But Christians also use the OT to teach, they should understand it

 

[Windwalker]

But Christians also use the OT to teach, they should understand it

What does "understand it" mean? No one reading it today can "understand it" as someone then did. We simply do not have the same referents to work from so general consensus today will never match how it would have been perceived then. And furthermore, no two people looking at the same thing today will understand that thing in exactly the same way, just as no two people did back then either. But when you add the variable of distance of time and removal of cultural, that perception of the past will vary even more between two people today. Not even to bring in stages of growth into this, how a person of 15 interprets and "understands" things in his world in vastly different ways than someone of 50.

So, to those who believe the Bible is God's direct word, even if so, when it hits our eyes it will refract and spray out into a trillion different colors of meaning. Which one of those colors is the truth? And furthermore, and more to the point, can truth even be definable as a thing? So what is "understanding" then? How do you ascertain that?

So what I see as what is pertinent, is that someone today looking at the OT, from a Christian context, they are seeing God through the filters of what they perceive today. They find reflections of colors that register with the palate of colors that resonate with them. Literature like this, like sacred scriptures, should not be approached like a science or history book (even if it uses those a backdrops for its underlying story). They are not technical manuals. They speak Truth, through what we perceive in them through ourselves. They become vehicles to open us to an inner world of truth. To treat them as technical manuals, so to speak, squeezes the life out of them. It flattens them, and flattens spirit as well.

So in this sense, when looking a sacred texts they are inspired texts, as they are expression of the human spirit, speaking Truth in an fallible package. In this sense, they are the word of God, through the human spirit. To say they are textually and historically and scientifically infallible is to miss entirely what can be heard in them.

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

What does "understand it" mean? No one reading it today can "understand it" as someone then did. We simply do not have the same referents to work from so general consensus today will never match how it would have been perceived then. And furthermore, no two people looking at the same thing today will understand that thing in exactly the same way, just as no two people did back then either. But when you add the variable of distance of time and removal of cultural, that perception of the past will vary even more between two people today. Not even to bring in stages of growth into this, how a person of 15 interprets and "understands" things in his world in vastly different ways than someone of 50.

So, to those who believe the Bible is God's direct word, even if so, when it hits our eyes it will refract and spray out into a trillion different colors of meaning. Which one of those colors is the truth? And furthermore, and more to the point, can truth even be definable as a thing? So what is "understanding" then? How do you ascertain that?

So what I see as what is pertinent, is that someone today looking at the OT, from a Christian context, they are seeing God through the filters of what they perceive today. They find reflections of colors that register with the palate of colors that resonate with them. Literature like this, like sacred scriptures, should not be approached like a science or history book (even if it uses those a backdrops for its underlying story). They are not technical manuals. They speak Truth, through what we perceive in them through ourselves. They become vehicles to open us to an inner world of truth. To treat them as technical manuals, so to speak, squeezes the life out of them. It flattens them, and flattens spirit as well.

So in this sense, when looking a sacred texts they are inspired texts, as they are expression of the human spirit, speaking Truth in an fallible package. In this sense, they are the word of God, through the human spirit. To say they are textually and historically and scientifically infallible is to miss entirely what can be heard in them.

I'm already aware of different interpretations. But I think it's a cop out to say "well we don't follow te mosaic law" when you do cheery pick things out of the mosaic law, you should have a explanation for the laws

 

[ChristineES]

I'm already aware of different interpretations. But I think it's a cop out to say "well we don't follow te mosaic law" when you do cheery pick things out of the mosaic law, you should have a explanation for the laws

It isn't a cop-out to say that we don't view the Bible as a list of rules and regulations. It isn't Cherry picking, either. I view the Bible as stories about men and women who followed God and stories about traditions, allegories, etc. That is how a lot of us view the Bible.

 

[Windwalker]

I'm already aware of different interpretations. But I think it's a cop out to say "well we don't follow te mosaic law" when you do cheery pick things out of the mosaic law, you should have a explanation for the laws

Let's put it this way, do you extract things from the Christian texts that you see truth and value in, while not swallowing the rest of it as whole?

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

It isn't a cop-out to say that we don't view the Bible as a list of rules and regulations. It isn't Cherry picking, either. I view the Bible as stories about men and women who followed God and stories about traditions, allegories, etc. That is how a lot of us view the Bible.

But in the reality the bible does have a list of laws, why does god permit certain laws at certain times and other laws at other times. I would think that would be a point of study as a Christian

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

Let's put it this way, do you extract things from the Christian texts that you see truth and value in, while not swallowing the rest of it as whole?

There is a difference between seeing good advice in all sorts of books and identifying as a Christian or being apart of an organised Christian church

 

[Windwalker]

There is a difference between seeing good advice in all sorts of books and identifying as a Christian or being apart of an organised Christian church

Why? Is it because you believe Christians are obliged to understand the texts as the literal word of God, because some define it that way? Aren't those that don't read it literally, doing exactly the same thing you see as OK?

 

[Wherenextcolumbus]

Why? Is it because you believe Christians are obliged to understand the texts as the literal word of God, because some define it that way? Aren't those that don't read it literally, doing exactly the same thing you see as OK?

I never said anything about interpreting it literally I said you should have an explaination

 

[Windwalker]

I never said anything about interpreting it literally I said you should have an explaination

I've offered lots of explanations in this thread. Do they not make sense?